COMMUNION OF SAINTS.

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acts, not in words, the truth and fineness of which all dogmatic artifices shall vainly endeavour to reach.

In all those cases, you will perceive, our Reformers, who stood upon the old catholic ground, were able far better to oppose the errors of Popery than those who abandoned that ground. This difference was remarkably illustrated in another point. A communion between the seen and unseen world,-between the spirits of the just made perfect, and those who were still wrestling between flesh and blood,-had always been regarded as one of the privileges which had been asserted for us by the incarnation, death, resurrection, and ascension of Christ. Without such an idea, the whole language of the 11th and 12th chapters of the Epistle to the Hebrews,-language which seems to be adopted for the most directly practical purposes,-is only the flight of an extravagant fancy. How this idea was perverted into the miserable notion of intervening mediators between man and his Lord, I have explained already. But when the Protestants threw off these notions, the truth which it had hidden almost perished with it. For the satisfaction of the individual conscience was now regarded as the end of Christ's work upon earth, and, as a necessary consequence in every Protestant body, the fall of Adam was regarded as the first doctrine of theology,the incarnation and sacrifice of Christ, as only the provision against its effects. What followed? The heart of man has no satisfaction

280

DOCTRINE--HOW PERVERTED.

in such a system,—it still asserts the possibility of fellowship with those whom it has lost; and it falls into all fantastic notions, as to the nature and manner of this intercourse,into imminent peril of that very error which was the source of all Papal confusion,-the error of believing that the sympathy of friends and fellow-sinners, is more precious and intimate than that which exists between the members of the body and their Lord. We say pure Protestantism made no provision against these deceptions of the heart, because it does not recognize the truth which the heart requires. It left innumerable loop-holes through which Popery might steal in, in those very walls and buttresses which it raised for the purpose of excluding Popery for ever. But, if you consider you will see, that the real barrier against it was that very truth which the Protestant system asserted so weakly, and threw so much into the shade. If an actual union had been established between God and man in the person of Christ,if he was actually God and actually man,-if on this rock his church stood, and it was against this rock that the gates of hell could not prevail, -all fancy that there could be any other ladder to ascend into the presence of the Holy One but through the suffering man who had borne our infirmities, and carried our sicknesses, was idle and profane; and yet this same truth set out with the power and clearness with which it is stated by the Apostle in the beginning of the Epistle to the Hebrews, involves that belief of a communion be

HOW SAFELY MAINTAINED.

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tween all redeemed creatures, militant and glorified, which the Papists corrupted and the Reformers forgot. Our Anglican Church embodied, in her Communion Service, the very fullest and highest form of this idea of communion between earth and heaven, and made the grounds of it the more firm, by removing from it every notion which could possibly make it unsafe. In her service we are taught, that it is not through communion with the creatures that we ascend to communion with God; but that, the highest communion is the foundation of all other, the fellowship with God, is the ground of fellowship between men. Their translation affects it not, so long as the objects of both,-those on this side the grave and the other,—are the same; if they have the same delights, the same occupations, if there is one centre to which all eyes are turned, one food by which all are sustained, conditions of space or time cannot affect their union, or hinder the blessings of it.

Thus the effects of the fancy, often mischievous, and always deceitful, are precluded by a truth which transcends them. And this truth not only lifts its head above the cloud-land, into the serene heaven, but has its foot firmly fixed on the common earth. In the infancy of the Reformation, its teachers delighted to expatiate on the Christianity of common life; they asserted constantly, that it was a sin to shut it up in cloisters, -a sin to deny that, in all the commonest transactions, God might be as much glorified as

282

PRACTICAL LIFE.

in the most elaborate exercises of devotion. But such sentences, while they might give freedom of spirit to many, did not in the issue produce the effect at which they aimed. Again and again Luther had to complain, that the farmers liked the Reformation very well, because it set their consciences free from priestly exactions, and seemed to leave them the liberty of oppressing their labourers as they listed. Again and again he wept and lamented, because the people fancied that he was giving them a licence to be secular, when what he wished was to persuade them, that in all things they ought to be religious. When the deliverance of the conscience was the end so exclusively kept in sight, I see not how it could have happened otherwise; nor when, at any particular crisis, or by any sudden movement, the attention to religion revived, do I see how it could have failed to happen, that the old Popish notions should be reproduced in Protestantism; that men should have begun to regard religious studies and ordinances, as entirely separated from their ordinary life, and should have looked upon that life, which, in their practice, had been utterly worldly, as such by its very nature and principles. Then, instead of cultivating that hatred of father and mother for the sake of Christ, which is the relinquishment of attachment based on an insecure selfish ground, for the purpose of rebuilding it on its true safe ground,-they learned to regard those relationships which Christ himself hath established, as in some sort interfering with his pre

DISCONNECTED WITH RELIGION. 283

rogative, then the new-fledged Christian thought, that the nest in which his wings had grown, was to be discarded and despised, then all citizenship and political life began to be looked upon as profane,—then order, and simplicity, and homely duties, and child-like obedience, were strangely set in contradiction with the faith which alone can foster them,-then conceits, and towering imaginations, and a desperate self-will, and a cunning self-indulgence, began to flourish under the name of that Gospel, which is to bring every thought into captivity. And where was the cardinal error? Or is it not a more important inquiry, where was the cardinal truth, by seizing which the error, that seemed so skilfully composed of what was old and what was modern, of Protestant and Popish inventions, might be subverted and effectually warded off? We say, that our Reformers were taught by a wiser spirit than their own, to declare both the truth and the error, not in discourses delivered to the ears of their own generation, but in forms appealing to the hearts of ages that were to come. Admitting a holy order and constitution in Christ, the national life, the family life, being, as they deemed, holy and divine ordinances, were of course esteemed parts, though subordinate parts of it. The church-life was in one sense the flower and consummation of all the rest. In one sense it included them all, -it might be spoken of as root, and stem, and flower; for the church was the great kingdom which God had set up on earth; grounded